Massive Retaliation?

Question

Massive retaliation left the Soviet Union with only one option. Analyze this option (Cold War).

Answer 1

to never use their nuclear weapons because it would be the end.....this doctrine was also known as Mutually Assured Destruction..or MAD.

MAD it might have been but it worked....we're still here and the Soviet Union isn't.

Answer 2

Massive Retaliation

Answer 3

A First Strike option. Trying to strike the US nuclear arsenal before _they_ could strike first. But once US nuclear missiles were based on submarines in December 1959, that option became practically meaningless.

"First-strike attack the use of a nuclear first strike capability, was greatly feared during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War the Soviet Union feared the United States would use its nuclear superiority to devastate the motherland."

"First strike : Soviet Union" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_strike#Soviet_Union

Answer 4

Massive retaliation We need someone who will be tough on national security. McCain is kicking Clinton and Obama's butt on that right now - even with his Iraq position. If Dems are planning to withdraw from Iraq, at the very least they need to show they are tough in regards to attacks to our allies and our own national security. EDIT: When someone attacks our ally - we retaliate. We don't play games.

Answer 5

option this that Massive retaliation was a term coined by Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in a speech on January 12, 1954.

Dulles stated that the U.S. would respond to military provocation "at places and with means of our own choosing." This was interpreted to mean that the U.S. could respond to any foreign challenge with nuclear weapons. Dulles also said that "Local defense must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power." This quote forms the basis for the term massive retaliation, which would back up any conventional defense against conventional attacks with a possible massive retaliatory attack involving nuclear weapons.

In August, 1945, the United States ended World War II with the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Four years later, on August 9, 1949, the Soviet Union developed its own nuclear weapons. At the time, both sides lacked the means to effectively use nuclear devices against each other.

However, with the introduction of aircraft like the Convair B-36 and eventually with nuclear triads being established, both countries were quickly increasing their ability to deliver nuclear weapons into the interior of the opposing country.

The doctrine of massive retaliation was based on the West's increasing fear at the perceived imbalance of power in conventional forces, and the corresponding inability to defend itself or prevail in conventional conflicts. By relying on a large nuclear arsenal for deterrence, President Eisenhower believed that conventional forces could be reduced while still maintaining military prestige and power and the capability to defend the western bloc.

Upon a conventional attack on Berlin, for instance, the United States would undertake a massive retaliation on the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. The massive response doctrine was thus an extension of mutually assured destruction to conventional attacks, conceivably deterring the Soviet Union from attacking any part of the United States' sphere of influence even with conventional weapons.


[edit] Effects
In theory, as the U.S.S.R. had no desire to provoke an all-out nuclear attack, the policy of massive response likely deterred any ambitions it would have had on Western Europe. Although the United States and NATO bloc would likely be utterly defeated in a conventional conflict with the Warsaw Pact forces if a conventional war were to occur, the massive response doctrine prevented the Soviets from advancing for fear that a nuclear attack would have been made upon the Soviet Union in response to a conventional attack.

It can be argued that, however, aside from raising tensions in an already strained relationship with the Soviet bloc, massive retaliation had little practical effects. A threat of massive retaliation is hard to make credible, and is inflexible in response to foreign policy issues. Everyday challenges of foreign policy could not be dealt with using a massive nuclear strike. In fact, the Soviet Union took many minor military actions that would have necessitated the use of nuclear weapons under a strict reading of the massive retaliation doctrine.

A massive retaliation doctrine, as with any nuclear strategy based on the principle of mutually assured destruction and as an extension the second-strike capability needed to form a retaliatory attack, encourages the opponent to perform a massive counterforce first strike. This, if successful, would cripple the defending state's retaliatory capacity and render a massive retaliation strategy useless.

Also, if both sides of a conflict adopt the same stance of massive response, it may result in unlimited escalation (a "nuclear spasm"), each believing that the other will back down after the first round of retaliation. Both problems are not unique to massive retaliation, but to nuclear deterrence as a whole.


[edit] Policy Shift
President John F. Kennedy abandoned the policy of massive retaliation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in favor of flexible response. Kennedy was not willing to tolerate Soviet aggression, but he also did not agree with the idea of brinkmanship. Under the Kennedy Administration, the U.S. adopted a more flexible policy in an attempt to avert nuclear war if the Soviets did not cooperate with American demands. If the United States' only announced military reaction to any Soviet incursion (no matter how small) were a massive nuclear strike, and the U.S. didn't follow through, then the Soviets would assume that the United States would never attack. This would have made the Soviet Union far more bold in its military ventures against U.S. allies and would probably resulted in a full-scale nuclear war. By having other, more flexible policies to deal with aggressive Soviet actions, the U.S. could opt out of a nuclear strike and take less damaging actions to rectify the problem without losing face in the international community.